US Press Freedom Rating Plummets

Reporters Without Borders released the Press Freedom Index this week.

Regarding the United State’s drop to #47 on their list, the report states that the US “owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.”

Which puts us behind my homeland the Czech Republic (#14), Niger (#29), Papua New Guinea (#35), and El Salvador (#37), among others. Hey, at least we beat Haiti, Timor, and Iran!

Takeways from The New Jim Crow

I just finished Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. I can’t recommend it enough. For everyone. READ IT NOW!

Here are some quotes that struck me:

“One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system – in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole – yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis).” Pg.9

“What is key to America’s understanding of class is the persistent belief – despite all evidence to the contrary – that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive, can move from a lower class to a higher class.” Pg.13

The rest are here:

When the Tea Party Controls Your School Board

Interesting things happen when local Tea Party affiliates infiltrate your school board:

• They implement racial and economic segregation in one of the most integrated school systems in America: Wake County School District in North Carolina. (With the financial backing of a wealthy Libertarian.)

• They ban books (and remove them from classrooms in front of students) that discuss Chicano history and culture, as well as race, ethnicity and oppression in general in Arizona.

You may recall that we have former Tuscon School District Superintendent Tom Horne (supported by his local Tea Party) to thank for this mess.  His legacy is being dutifully carried forward by current Superintendent John Huppenthal, “who threatened to withhold millions of dollars if TUSD didn’t terminate the nationally acclaimed [Mexican-American studies] program immediately.”

Then Tuscon school administrator Lupita Garcia comes out and actually says: “This country is called America, okay? And they study US history. If you were to go back to Mexico… you would study Mexican history.”

• They remove mention of racial minorities and critique of wealthy whites from history books in Tennessee.

Here is some of their actual curriculum criteria:

“No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

Also:

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the [coalition of Tennessee Tea Party's] lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.

• And how can we forget that last year, Tea Party affiliates in Texas attempted to edit out the word “slavery” from their textbooks and replace it instead with the term “Atlantic Triangular Trade“.

Tough Guise

Guess what! You can watch this awesome documentary on youtube for free: Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity.

IMDB has this to say about this 1999 film:

Tough Guise systematically examines the relationship between pop-cultural imagery and the social construction of masculine identities in the U.S. at the dawn of the 21st century.

Here is Part 1:

Thanks to Johnny and a shadowy figure known as Shenanigans for tipping me off.

Quote of the Day

“Behind every great fortune is a crime.”

-Honore de Balzac, 1799-1850

Question from a White Dude

Should I make this a regular sort of column?

Here’s a real question a real White Dude posted, of all places, to my Facebook page:

Why should illegal immigrants have rights?

Thanks for making it easy for me, White Dude! Because all human beings have rights. Done!

You can discover this mysterious concept in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The word “universal” is a helpful hint, confused White Dude!

For further clarification, let us examine the issue. Permission to stay and work in America indefinitely is extremely hard to come by, and will take years, possibly more than a decade, to come by, if ever. But usually, one’s status as an American national or a national of another country is arrived at by dumb luck: whose womb we happened to pop out of. Official permission to stay in America is not granted on a basis of merit. It is granted by luck of birth, and sometimes it is granted to people with enough money and influence to get around the rules.

There are many, many legitimate reasons why someone not born in America would like to live and work here. These reasons are amply examined in many places on the interweb, and I do not feel like reinventing that wheel here.

So, White Dude, unless you believe that dumb luck is a good method for determining who gets human rights and who is treated less than human, let’s play it safe and remember that all humans have rights.

Also, White Dude, never call a human being “illegal” in my presence again, mmmkay?

Skyscrapers Correlate with Financial Crises

Interesting…

From Barclays Capital via Rawstory:

“Our Skyscraper Index continues to show an unhealthy correlation between construction of the next world’s tallest building and an impending financial crisis — New York 1930; Chicago 1974; Kuala Lumpur 1997 and Dubai 2010.

“Yet often the world’s tallest buildings are simply the edifice of a broader skyscraper building boom, reflecting a widespread misallocation of capital and an impending economic correction.”

Just So’s We’re Clear

Just so that we’re clear:

Being PRO-CHOICE means that you believe individual women should be free to make their own reproductive choices, which may include birth control or abortion or having any number of children. You believe each woman should make her own choices, even if you do not personally think abortion is right, and/or you would never make that choice for yourself.

Being PRO-LIFE means you believe women should NOT have certain reproductive options (abortion, perhaps emergency contraception, sometimes even all forms of birth control). You do not believe individual women should be able to make their own choices based on their beliefs, instead you wish to outlaw abortion and/or certain other reproductive options.

If a politician says they are “pro-life”, they are clearly communicating that they wish to end abortion rights, and maybe some or all birth control rights as well.

Or, for example, a devout Catholic could be completely against abortion, but yet still be pro-choice because they do not want to prevent all women from making their own decisions based on their own beliefs.

One position is about increasing freedom, and another is about reducing it. Just so’s we’re all clear on that

A Bigoted White Politician from Georgia? You Don’t Say!

“I think Mitt Romney is a nice man, but I’m afraid of his Mormon faith. [At least] it’s better than a Muslim.”

-Republican Georgia State Senator Judy Manning